18 Apr Virut
Thai artist Virut Panchabuse is known for his engaging and brazen pop-art portraits entirely made of collage art.
He studied art at the College of High Art in Bangkok specializing at the capital’s King Mongkut, and he always continued to paint, even though after graduation he started an office job that he promptly stopped to devote himself to art.
In a short time his talent and determination caught the attention of many gallery owners, buyers and collectors that appreciated his efforts and he soon became a full time artist.
Over the years his style has undergone a substantial evolution where his delicate brush and spatula portraits turned into flaming collage artworks.
A successful formula is often copied; Virut’s artistic affirmation was without exception but he changed his approach after a lot of experiments, preferring to express himself with an elaborate and painstaking technique such as collage art.
This choice explains a lot about Virut and the artist he wants to be: an exclusive artist, with a powerful voice that cannot be imitated and a free thinker who values his time to reflect about a society that is running fast and aimlessly.
His creative process begins online, where he scans through thousands of images we are bombarded with every day.
His priority is not the beauty of faces, or their recognizability. Virut looks for emotions for his portraits, because truth is the ultimate goal of his artistic conception.
Collage art is very different from painting: it is a question of nuances and the result depends on the availability of necessary raw material: stacks of old newspapers and magazines bought in second- hand shops.
Publications are his palette of colors and only experience has taught him which ones are the best in terms of intensity, persistence, and quality: generally porn and fashion are the best for coloured skin.
Tiny scraps of colourful paper are meticulously layered, one next to the other to achieve a large size portrait, each different, each unique but all full of emotions. The original image disappears but the feeling remains.
Those massive collages are hits amongst art collectors.
Virut’s pieces hang on walls of art galleries and private homes around the world: America; China; France; India; Italy; Malaysia; Netherlands… the list goes on.
His artworks are among others in possession of prestigious worldwide collections such as that of Italian fashion giant Luciano Benetton or Chinese top-model Liu Dan.
With that being said, his art displayed in a variety of locations, admired by so many people across the world, satisfies Virut’s best wish as an artist: immortality.
After his first extraordinary success through awards and solo exhibitions in Asia, the artist had his first European exhibition in Amsterdam in 2017, directly followed by one in Bahrain and in Berlin in 2018, selling out in all the cities.
Since December 2018 he is permanently at Sconci Gallery in Dubai, which is planning to dedicate to the artist a major solo exhibition in 2020.
